


punisher

by moondown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Pre-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27088105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moondown/pseuds/moondown
Summary: This is the second time Felix has seen Dimitri die, so it metabolizes faster. As he leans against a banister, searching the grounds for movement, he remembers where Ingrid and Sylvain are coming from—but they’re different than him. Open-armed, willing to be hurt. He wants to call this weakness, but he knows better.——Felix, Sylvain, and Ingrid grieve a sort of death. Blue Lions route; post-reveal at the Holy Mausoleum.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea & Sylvain Jose Gautier, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Kudos: 26





	punisher

**Author's Note:**

> Felix-centric with a bleak view of Faerghus' future. There's an implied romantic tension between Felix and Sylvain, but it's pretty vague. Title is a Phoebe Bridgers song.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

_Look into the dark heart and you will see what the dark eats other than your heart._

— C. D. Wright, _One with Others_

§

“You’d think they’d have a guard posted,” Sylvain says, leaving it at that. 

A few steps behind him, Felix’s gaze slowly climbs the tower’s ivy scarf. Vines dangle in the wind, the white edges of leaves flashing against the frostbitten sky, and a chill arrows into his collar. 

The cold can do this—magnetize bodies. Felix scrapes shoulders with Ingrid, then draws in his arms, renewing the distance. A strand of her straw hair, loosed from a braid, remains still on his sleeve. 

It’s only the three of them. Two are still trying to make sense of what they saw, and Felix sets his jaw, angry that he’d been right. 

Sylvain has been to the goddess tower before, with women. This isn’t said but known. Felix and Ingrid share a cool look with one another as Sylvain slides his finger along the door’s threshold, finds the dip in the stone he’s searching for, and hauls it open. It’s decorated steel, heavy; its hinges screech.

“You need to be quieter,” Ingrid chastises.

She hooks her chin over her shoulder as Sylvain half-asses an apology, pinning her eyes to three points on this side of the chapel: the corner by the well, the side-entrance, and in the direction of the stairs. The look she wears makes it seem possible that she can keep anyone shadowing them at bay. 

Sylvain _come ons_ , waving them in. Ingrid steps in first, then Felix, scouring the new dark. Sylvain bumps into him and stumbles, his hand pressed to the small of Felix’s back to steady himself. Then he breathes a laugh and moves around the new wall Felix and Ingrid make.

Felix listens to more than watches Sylvain ease through the ground floor. When Sylvain finally lights a torch, Felix squints. The flames hang their shadows above their heads and lick the ramparts until it seems as though the tower is a panting, insatiable beast. 

If the others could be honest with themselves, this would be clear: they’re here, in a tower of lovers, to grieve. Dimitri has died another time. 

They were once four, yes. That feels like a dream to Felix. He studies the lay of the stone as they climb the stairs of the tower, Sylvain leading with the torch, then Ingrid on his heels, then him behind. No wind slips between the bricks’ tight sealing, but the chill oozes through the occasional windows that line the way up. Each time they pass through a cold spot, it reminds Felix of a ghost. 

The stairwell finally opens, a snake’s jaw. While Sylvain places the torch in a holder, Ingrid and Felix sidle past him into the tower’s top, and only, floor. The fire eats away its blue shadows like moth larvae. 

Neither Felix nor Ingrid understand why they agreed to this. Sylvain untucks a flask from his half-unbuttoned overshirt and twists off the cap, the acrid smell of alcohol quartering the tension. He takes a swig and offers the flask to Ingrid, his motions fluid and practiced; it makes Felix press his tongue hard into the point of his canine tooth.

Ingrid holds it. For a moment, Felix thinks they’ll be shown an uncharacteristic impulse—but Ingrid tips the container until an amber shot pours from its mouth, splatters into the shape of a sun on the floor. 

“For…” Ingrid sighs. 

Felix’s fingers twitch. He snatches the flask from her and bites out: “You’re grieving the wrong person,” like she always is. 

He drinks a slug of liquor. Whiskey. Sylvain tries to pacify him. “We still don’t understand everything His Highness has been through.” 

“You saw him,” Felix snaps. Everyone did. And they all just stood there, the bewildered living, watching Dimitri squeeze someone’s face so hard his fingers plowed through the soft flesh. “You’re making excuses for a beast.”

“Felix,” Ingrid warns. 

Felix scoffs. Sylvain eases the flask from his white-knuckled grip. 

One wall of the goddess tower is swarmed with brambles. The other is carved into archways, which lead onto a balcony overlooking the grounds of the monastery. Felix steps outside, his chest still burning. Sylvain and Ingrid murmur to each other about whether or not to follow him until, finally, Ingrid decides, “Let’s give him a minute to cool off.”

Felix cools off. This is the second time he’s seen Dimitri die so it metabolizes faster. As he leans against a banister, searching the grounds for movement, he remembers where Ingrid and Sylvain are coming from—but they’re different than him. Open-armed, willing to be hurt. He wants to call this weakness, but he knows better. 

Anyway, his minute runs out. Sylvain and Ingrid step onto the balcony. 

“It’s beautiful up here,” Ingrid acknowledges. 

They can see everything: the stable, the pond, the gazebo. At night the grounds are so lifeless they seem fossilized; it becomes easy to imagine the monastery abandoned. Even so, they’ve been tasked to protect it and will make good on their word in a few weeks’ time. It won’t matter why these promises were made, just that, in Faerghus, it’s cowardly to turn away from convention. 

“Sometimes,” Sylvain says, leaning between Felix and Ingrid to point at the pond. “When the moon is full, it strobes the surface, and the water turns white-gold. It honestly looks like milk. And you can see all the shadows of the fish moving through it.” 

Sylvain sways his hand in the fluid mimicry of a fish body. “It should be impossible,” he says, “that you could see that. But I swear. I’ve stood here and watched them for hours. And the fish just swim around under the film, circling each other. It’s endless. Mindless.” 

Tonight, the water is glittering black and looks like tar. Felix accuses Sylvain of sentimentalizing. 

“Or he’s romanticizing,” Ingrid teases.

“Hey, if I could remember any of the girls that I saw it with, I’d have them back me up.”

Ingrid’s voice raises: “ _Sylvain_ ,” but he laughs, shushing her: a reminder that the key to not getting caught depends on them being quiet. 

All three fall silent. Sylvain and Felix pass the flask back and forth until a headache stems at the nape of Felix’s neck and wraps its tendrils loosely around his skull, as if a large hand is gripping him. 

What a piss-poor wake this is. One without sentimentality. All Felix can think about is the pleasure on Dimitri’s blood-flecked face as he devastated soldiers in the holy mausoleum. He was like an avalanche: glacial, ruthless—anything good in him buried deep in his own snow, so deep that sometimes Felix can’t remember what Dimitri was like before. 

Sylvain bumps his shoulder. Felix blinks, furrowing his brow. “Sorry,” Sylvain breathes through his smile. “Lost you for a second.”

Felix scoffs, turning his back to the church grounds. The base of his spine pressed against the balcony, he crosses his arms, looking hard at the branches folding themselves over the wall, caging in the stone. 

“He’s the one who’s gone,” he says stubbornly. Ingrid leans around Sylvain to cast him a stern look; Sylvain tucks his chin over his shoulder, then turns back. Felix asks, “Why won’t anyone believe me?” 

“It’s not that easy, Felix,” Sylvain says as Ingrid posits, “That wasn’t Prince Dimitri.”

Felix glares at her, but Ingrid stands her ground. “Felix, you know deep down that his Highness is kind. He cares for his people. And he’s going to save Faerghus.” 

“You’re pathetic,” Felix seethes. Sylvain tries to interject and can’t get a word in. “All you want from Dimitri is for him to prove that Glenn’s death meant something. But it didn’t. Glenn died for nothing, like every other fucking _true knight_.” 

Ingrid crackles, “How dare you—”

“Alright, timeout.” Sylvain makes a T-shape with his hands. Ingrid knocks elbows with him as she folds her arms and walks from the balcony back into the tower.

Outside Felix and Sylvain listen to Ingrid’s footsteps stop. Forever loyal, she’s chosen not to leave without them, though she could. Should. 

Sylvain sighs, scrubbing a hand through his red hair. “Did you really have to do that?” 

“I know what you saw,” Felix snaps. “And I told you—I’ve seen it before. That face. He enjoys it, Sylvain. He would kill you if you stood against him.” 

“Well, we’re not against him,” Sylvain cuts in. “We all want Faerghus to thrive. Don’t we?” 

No one is going to save them, Felix thinks. Not the Goddess, not the professor, and not Dimitri. Felix wishes Ingrid and Sylvain could see beyond what’s in front of them.

Felix huffs through his nose and steadies his gaze on the ground.

“Okay then,” Sylvain says. “He’s our shot.”

“There should be more to it than that,” Felix grits. His lashes flicker. “There should be more to our lives than protecting a king that serves the dead.” 

Some seconds pass. Finally Sylvain thumbs Felix’s cheek, crushing the bulb of a tear. Felix doesn’t feel it until then. He jerks his face away, shuddering through his exhale, and smears his wrist under both eyes, and blinks, and faces the wind to dry them. 

In seconds Felix porcelains. “It’s the whiskey,” he mutters. 

And Sylvain answers, “Yeah.” 

They move slowly off the balcony, Sylvain tucking away the flask, and they return to Ingrid no more consoled than they’d been climbing the stairs up here. 

All of their bodies, even now, are drawn to each other in the harsh, deepening cold. Sylvain’s shadow covers them like a blanket. Felix trickles his fingers over the arrow-point of Ingrid’s elbow, unable to speak his apology. And Ingrid, after a deep, composing breath, levels: “I know how painful this is.” Her acceptance. 


End file.
